2034: A Novel of the Next World War

Not to be one of those girlies who puts GIFs in their reviews, but this one really had me like:


Let's unpack.

I don't consider myself a huge modern war buff who follows the military industrial complex and plays armchair strategist with all the keyboard warriors in the War Thunder forums, but I'm aware of that whole subculture and have dipped my toe into learning more about it from time to time. Hell, the only reason I picked this book up in the first place (besides the cover; I'm a sucker for an orange and black motif) was because I was so fascinated with the 2020 Commission Report that I read last year and thought, "maybe this is a new genre I could get into." Not necessarily military thrillers a la Clancy, but more grounded, near-future "what-if" scenarios written by subject matter experts.

That's what I was expecting given the authors' credentials, but that's not what we have here. There is a lot more suspension of disbelief required of the reader than I was expecting. So much so that after the inciting incident I was preparing to strap in and get a Boomer-esque "technology bad!" lecturing for the next 250 pages, but that would've been a little too coherent. In fact, this book felt like it couldn't really decide on what message it wanted to convey. But I do know that a lot of time was given to foreign nationals shit-talking America, but nothing at all from our allies (the EU literally is not even mentioned in the entire book, and neither is South Korea. Japan and Australia are likewise checked out from a developing hot war in their own backyard for no discernible reason).

Without giving anything away, the plot follows multiple people on different sides of the developing conflict, often simultaneously during the bigger events, but the story still feels "small" for lack of a better word. And I think the story suffers for it, because the big picture geopolitcs churning in the background is more interesting than what most of the characters have to offer. I wish I got more of that one step removed perspective; maybe that'd help me understand how a crisis between two nuclear armed first-rate powers slowly escalates over the course of weeks instead of hours.

I don't think this book meant to glorify war, but that kinda happens anyway because I feel like I'm supposed to be rooting for a certain character who defies orders (twice!) with disastrous results in pursuit of ~that moment~. I also don't think it intended to come down as particularly anti-war either because two separate Pearl Harbor-level events happen 'off-screen' as it were, instead of being described in every grisly, unsettling detail that they could have been. This book simply didn't know what it wanted to do.

Side note: it's kind of odd to say this of a book written in 2021 about events in 2034, but this book did not age well. You mean to tell me that while shit's going down in the South China Sea, Russia is able to unilaterally attack Poland (a NATO member), establish a zone of control linking Kaliningrad to Belarus in just two weeks, and Western Europe does nothing? And that these attacks are launched from the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's aircraft carrier that is notorious for being constantly under repair and by my math would be 52 years old in 2034? I have to laugh.

There's simply too many technical mistakes going on here for me to enjoy the story. "Cyber warfare" may as well be magic in this setting. Entire carrier groups can just go missing with the flip of a switch. Yet sometimes aircraft carriers are just cruising around unescorted without even an AEGIS vessel, and apparently no one has a CIWS system to deal with enemy fighters. The ending is ambiguous and the mediating power is... not who I expected it to be, but sure.

If this book wanted to make a statement on geopolitics and ideology, it should have picked a side. If it wanted to be a warning for how future conflicts may look, it should have done more research. If it just wanted to be entertaining, it should have been more fun.